A New Treasure Island Ending
by rillbrook
Summary: It seems to me that the ending of Treasure Island doesn't quite live up to the rest of the book, so this is a new ending for it. While I can't claim it is as exciting as the classic book, I hope it wraps everything up a bit more satisfyingly than the orig


The way to England was easy. The weather was fair with us and the new crew, despite the captain's understandable suspicions, were not gentlemen of fortune, and mutiny seemed beyond their wants or abilities. They were unaware of the great wealth in the hold, as the doctor had wisely taken the precaution of placing it in boxes marked "Bibles (And Other Educationables)." The men soon learned to shy away from these boxes, along with the eager glint that the doctor forced in his eyes if they ever even glanced at the cargo. Ben Gunn had shown great joy in shaving and grooming and now cut a nearly respectable figure, though his speech was as drifting as ever.

As for Silver, he was not allowed out among the crew, and was always kept where we could keep an eye on him. For the most part he was unbound, but if for some reason of great importance or difficulty all were needed on deck, the squire took great pleasure in securing Silver fast to a chair.

And me, I had suffered a gash on my left leg while helping the doctor move the supplies, and the wound had infected halfway home. Much time I spent in my bunk, wonderful strange visions floating before my eyes. 

I would often see my mother, her back bent from the wary work. 

"Jim?" she would say, her eyes wrinkling in confusion, "Jim, where did you go? The squire's worthless boy left and the money has been scarce."

In my vision I would try to show her the vast treasure I was bringing to her, tried to show how she would never have to worry again. But, every time, I would hear the distant sound of a one legged man walking, and Long John Silver would appear, a crooked grin on his face, dressed in strange yet familiar clothes, and pick away the money piece by piece until my mother and I had nothing.

This vision made me wary around the repented ship's cook, and in my lucid hours I would go for hobbling walks along the decks to escape his winking eyes and cunning glances. The salty air of the ocean was starting to seem as natural to me as the faint smell of ale when I worked at the inn, and I was happy that I had returned with treasure enough to no longer have to run a place of service.

All said, I was glad that my illness had faded enough for me to witness our return to Bristol. The sight of English coast was enough to send my spirits high, and I felt well enough to stand beside the squire and the doctor at the fore railing, feeling the sea spray blow over us. Our smiles would have been something to witness, and it seems to me that everybody should leave for distant lands at least once, if nothing else to experience the joy of coming home.

The celebration on the deck drained my energy, and the doctor instructed me to rest below decks for a bit. I agreed and went down and past Silver, who flashed me a wide smile.

            "Well now, Hawkins my boy! Back to England, are we? I smells it in the air. Now…" He leaned as far forward as the ropes would allow and his eyes penetrated mine. "You wouldn't forget yer promise to me, would ya'? You'll speak good about me at a trial, wouldn't you?"  

            In my weak condition, the best I could do was nod and try to hurry on my way past him, but before I could leave the room he gave one more yell.

            "Don't break no promise to ol' John now! He never did less the 'e promised to you!" I shut the door and laid back on the bunk.

            In a short time, I heard Dr. Livesey and the squire coming below. Before Silver could plead to them, the doctor spoke.

            "Alright John. We have landed at England, the voyage is over, the crew has taken pay and left, and it is time for you to get your dues as well." I heard a chair squeak as Silver leaned back.

"Aye doctor, 'tis just as you tell it. I accept this as just and right, but I ask you as a man of yer word, don't forget to speak me kindly when the charging is started. You promised to keep me from th' gallows." 

The squire gave a startled snort.

            "I made no such promise!" he bellowed. 

            "Yes, but I did," said the doctor, "and I am a man of my word." 

            "I thought no less of you, Dr. Livesey. Never a doubt in my mind." said Silver, sounding much relieved.

"Enough of this!" said the squire, cutting off further words sharply, "John, we go to the magistrate immediately and may god have mercy on your soul! Ben!"

            The shuffling footsteps of Ben approached and stopped.

            "What, says I, do you wish for me with this one legged devil of a man?" Ben said, in a tremulous voice.

            "Ben," said the doctor, "We need you to guard John while we fetch the authority to handle him. Now, he is bound hand and foot. All you have to do is keep him so."

            "Ah!" cried Ben, "Just keep him so, says you. That I can do, but hurry to return, for the less time I spend with this fiend the better I be." A snort came from Silver's corner.

            "You! Be quiet!" The squire's voice boomed. "Ben, I suggest you gag this man." Following came a series of stomps as the two men departed leaving Silver, Ben and I. 

            I closed my eyes and sighed, relieved that finally this chapter of mistrust and betrayal was ending. I heard Ben searching through cabinets and mumbling to himself.

"Yes sir, a gag, he says. Why, would he face down the devil with a gag? What a man to leave me here with such. A gag, says I. A gag!" A loud bang suggested a drawer slipping and falling to the floor. Silver laughed jovially.

            "Ah Ben, my old shipmate, how has ye been taking to life? Good as ever, I warrants it?" 

            "Quiet you…" Ben's voice was too faint to imitate the squire's. "The man told you to be at silence, an' I'd suggest that you do that too." 

Another soft chuckle came that sent chills down my body to the tip of my wounded leg. 

            "Aye, Ben. Aye. I'll be quiet, just as you say now." And then silence. Ben shuffled around a bit more, then sounded as if he settled in a chair. 

            I listened with baited breath, but nothing more was said, and it appeared as though Ben was holding his own. Suddenly my own sleepiness took me over and I faded out. 

            My eye's snapped open, sweat on my brow. It couldn't have been more than a couple minutes past based on the sunlight. My heart sunk as I heard voices in the next room . First Ben:

            "No, sir, no. That I can't do. You'll get me, says you! Well, where you'll end you won't get no one." 

            Silver's voice was gentle and soothing, but with a faint breath of iron in the back of it.

            "No, of course not. I couldn't touch ye. Not me. But cans you doubt that I could find a way, perhaps two, to return old favors. _All favors, be they good or bad, and which woulds you like returned?"_

            "You wouldn't…" Ben's voice sounded terrified, and I started to feel an inkling of fear entering my heart. Silver was twisting the poor man's soul. Ben tried to sound stronger, his words rushing out. "No. You couldn't. How could you do an'thing at all where you'll be? You can speak your riddles, but you'll say later, 'That Ben, I couldn't get him,' you'll say, 'I tried and tried but his iron will be too much.' That's what you'll say."

            "Ben!" The iron grew in John's voice. "Ben. How do you expect me to believe ye? By the devil you sounds like a captain whose forgotten how to steer a boat! All confused like. Remember Sam Creswick? Back on Flint's ship? Remember what he said to me?"

            "Aye." Ben sounded distant, as if in some other time and place. "Aye. He said he didn't give a palmsfull of care for you, and said he pitied hell when you arrived there."

            "That's the one, Ben. Do you remember what happened to him?"

            There was a pause. Silver repeated softly:

            "Ben?"

            "He left the boat, that's all."

            Silver sighed.

            "After that, Ben. What happened to him later? On his new ship?

            "Oh…" Ben shuddered loudly, "He fell into the sea 'round the coast of Spanish America."

            "Aye, that he did, Ben. That he did." By now I felt doom hovering over all as Silver brought Ben closer and closer to damning us both. I tried to rise, but could only half sit up. Silver made a soft clucking sound with his tongue. "Now, Ben. Why don'tcha free an ol' friend from his binds?" 

            I tried to shout, to offer support and stop Ben from doing the worst, but I couldn't make a sound. Ben tried with his last to fight the words.

            "Now, I won't do that, Silver. I won't! You mind me now!" 

Silver was silent as a corpse's breath for a moment, then:

            "Nobody minds Ben Gunn," he said quietly. "Nobody minds him alive…" A pause. "Or dead."

            Ben groaned and I heard the scrape of a knife being grabbed from a table, then the slow grating sound of ropes being sawed through. 

            Panic set in. I pulled myself out of the bunk and fell heavily against the floor. Waves of pain from my leg nearly took me, but I struggled on. There was a window at one end of the cabin, and I felt sure to be better in the sea below the window than in the cabin with Silver. I could only move  few inches at a time with my leg, and the sawing from the other room was becoming quicker.

            "That's right, Ben." Silver's voice roared out, "Help an old shipmate. 'Tis a true act, and a wise 'un as well."  

            There still lay six feet of cabin floor, and the window seemed impossibly distant to my slow painful movement. Another outstretched arm. Another slow drag. Another wince as my leg slid. Another six inches gone.

            "Quicker Ben! My hands be almost free!"

            It is a truly terrible thing to hear one's death being freed from its prison, and I would be lying if I said I felt much hope for stepping ashore from the accursed boat.

            There came the rustle of ropes being removed, and the sound of a man lifting from a chair. I saw at least three and a half more feet before I would be able to grope for the sill and pull myself up, but I kept on nonetheless, wishing against all for some delay on the part of Silver's. 

            My wish died at the slow thumping of a wooden crutch on the floor. Then came a swish of air, a cry from Ben, and a dull thud against the wooden boards. The door swung open.

            I turned slightly, my stomach filling with terror. There stood Silver, leaning on his crutch, a cutlass in his free hand and that strange grin across his features. Behind him I could see poor Ben Gunn's body twisted on the floor, alive, but unconscious.

            I had no chance of escape being still too far short of the window to reach the outside and sure that Silver would give me little chance to close that gap. I turned onto my back so to look my attacker in the eye. I would give him no excuse to label me  coward.

            He stood motionless, not even a blink. The grin faded, then came back wider.

            "So my good friend Hawkins don't appear to put the trust in me that he wanted me to give him." His voice was calm, almost jovial, as if making small talk in the galley again. I spat.

            "Does it look as though you should be trusted?" I asked bitterly.

            He took a step closer, leaning heavily on his crutch, the cutlass lowered slightly.

            "No, I suppose it don't at all." he said, "Not at all. But I also don't suppose I care for formalities or courts. I'd rather take this chance than that."  I answered with silence, glaring at him. He gave me a wink. "How be your leg, Jim?" 

"I suffer little." I said shortly. He leaned closer.

"Aye, but by my word, lad, I will _make _ye suffer! How does it feel then to haf to crawl? Howdja like I could make that permanent?" he said, twisting the cutlass in the light. "Howdja like that now, Jim?"

            "It wouldn't appear I have much choice," I responded slowly, "but I will take what you have without fear, for you are less than me and I will die with that."

            His eyes blazed.

            "Not afearing!" He looked closely and  then nodded. "Aye, I can see that you aren't. Not a bit." His nod turned to a head shake. "This will take new thinking." And with that he lowered himself onto my bunk and stared at me, shifting his cutlass from hand to hand. 

I slowly sat up and worked my way backwards until I felt the wall, then used it as support to pull myself higher until I was standing. My leg was in agony, but I would not die sitting down.

            Silver looked slightly bemused at what I was doing, but stood quickly.

            "Now don't think of leaving through that window. We have some things to discuss, you and I." He pulled me close to him, his breath hissing in my face. "I've been puttin' my mind to how events turned wrong, and certain things been coming to light that I jus' wasn't seeing before." His hand dropped to his side and I, suddenly unsupported, fell with a cry. 

"It's all been goin' foul for me this voyage. My plans should have ripped off without a hitch, but something kept getting in the way. I couldn't see what it could be. Now I sees." His voice became more agitated. "Shall I tell you what I sees? I sees you! All the time, you! Smart as paint you are, lad. Ambitious and crafty, but hide it all under a skin of loyalty and dooty." I stared in dumb disbelief at the man. He appeared to note it little and continued. "Who spies on my every turn? Hawkins, of course. Who conspires with me old and wild shipmate Ben? Hawkins! Who, I ask ag'in, steals my ship from right underneath the boots of my watch? Hawkins! Hawkins! HAWKINS!"

His face was quite red then, and his rage was something terrible to see. I strove to show brave exterior, but every part of my insides shook before the wind of this storm. Silver pointed a single finger at me. It wavered slightly, as if held steady only by great effort, then it lowered. As quickly as the rage had come it had gone, and the smile returned to his face. 

"By thunder," he said, in a gentler voice, "If I had been half as cunning as ye, I would be a richer man now. But the pas' is the pas' and today is today. I've learned. I knows who to turn to." He glanced out the window as if suddenly remembering his situation. The sunlight showed that twenty minutes had passed, and the magistrate could be arriving any moment. Silver bent over his crutch and glared down at me. 

"Boy, you tell me a way I could escape hanging," he said quickly, "or I swear, y'ell regret every breath ye ever took."

My mind raced terribly, but nothing seemed to be there. I flushed. I stammered, then sat in a half minutes silence while he ran the cutlass blade along his thumb. Thoughts flashed through my head, but nothing concrete or workable. Surely I was not as clever as he had guessed and I felt doomed to die. I felt a tear slide down my face and… 

I came up with it. 

"Become a man of the cloth." At my words, he moved wrong and a thin line of blood ran down his hand. He blinked.

"A what?"  he said, his voice thick and disbelieving.

"A priest, sir" I answered quickly.

"And what, in the devils name," he asked, "would that do?"

I swallowed and wet my lips, knowing that my answer could forever hold as my dying words.

"Well sir," I said carefully, "if you walked off this boat just now and reemerged into England sunlight as a priest, who would find you? Who would look for the mutineer and gentleman of fortune under the cowl of a priestly robe?"

            His eye flashed slightly.

            "Aye," he said, "not a man among them would. But how would I live?" 

            "Trust." I said, gaining confidence. "People trust priests. They let them in houses,  leave their gold out and go to sleep, trusting with all their soul that the man won't gain himself a pocketful and slip out the window."

            Silver's grin came back in full force.

            "You don't disappoint. A brilliant scheme if I ever heard one." He paused, a thought striking him. "They says that heaven looks lightly on the sins of its servants, don't they?"

            "The pearly gates could well open for you still." I answered. 

            His face still showed a faint hint of indecision. He looked down, then back at me.

"And people give donations to priests, don't they?" he asked.

            "Without a single question of where it will go."    

            Silver straightened his clothes and dropped the cutlass to the floor. He started out of the room, then paused and turned back to me.

            "Praise the Lord." he said, gave me a last wink, and departed.

            I watched the door and Ben's unconscious figure and breathed a slow sigh of relief. I would still come home to help my mother and buy her enough as to never need the inn again.

            But I would be sure to warn her of a friendly priest with one leg and a crooked smile.

  
  



End file.
